PASADENA – One of the rituals of summer is the Dodgers’ Hollywood Stars game, in which the Z-list “celebrities” have to be introduced, along with their resumés.

At such times, Jaime Jarrin sits in the press box and shakes his head.

“Stars? These are not stars,” he will say. “I remember when they used to have Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole. Thosewere stars.”

Jarrin also remembers 1981, when a round kid with a bad haircut vaulted off his dirt floor in Sonora and became the act that the other actors paid to see.

Fernandomania happened 25 years ago.

Now thatwas a star.

Fernando Valenzuela was a completely organic phenomenon. The Dodgers cleaned him up, but they did not try to sell him. He did that himself.

Fernandomania was not a wildfire merely because Valenzuela was so young and Mexican. He was young, Mexican and so extraordinary.

After Valenzuela’s 10-game cameo at the end of 1980, he got an opening day start in ’81 because Jerry Reuss hurt his ankle running. In that start and in each of his next eight, he threw nine innings. He was 8-0 with an 0.50 ERA.

He won one of his next eight starts, and then he gathered himself and finished at 13-7 with 11 complete games and eight shutouts. He was the first Cy Young winner who was also Rookie of the Year.

Then he caught snowflakes on his tongue in Montreal, blew vapor through his fingers like an imaginary cigarette, and won the Rick Monday game that clinched the NL playoffs.

And he beat the Yankees without his stuff in Game 3 of the World Series, and the Dodgers suddenly believed they could be champs.

“He made Mexican-Americans feel a little more Mexican, and he made Mexicans feel a little more American,” said Tomas Benitez, an actor and community cultural worker, on Sunday.

“Back then Mexicans and Mexican-Americans had their tensions, over shared space and the like. At first, some of them would say, ‘Who is this Indian?’ But they all came together – at the ballpark, in the bars, listening to Jaime and Vin Scully on the radio in the back yard – when Fernando pitched. He made us proud to be Mexican.”

Valenzuela was admitted into the Shrine of the Eternals on Sunday, by the Baseball Reliquary, which honors those who brought flavor to the game. Josh Gibson, superstar of the Negro Leagues, also entered on Sunday. So did Kenichi Zenimura, who played and coached teams in Japanese internment camps.

Valenzuela crammed 2,930 innings into a career he somehow prolonged until 36. He finished 173-153 and won’t make the real Hall of Fame. That contradicts pompous Hall voters, some of whom maintain a player doesn’t belong “unless you can’t write the history of the game without him.” Valenzuela is a chapter all his own.

But the L.A. nights were lonely. Shielded by Jarrin and scout Mike Brito, Valenzuela was often a prisoner. After games he would visit El Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, for dinner and beers. Then he retreated.

“He couldn’t go get a hamburger anywhere, especially in East L.A.,” said Bobby Castillo, the Dodger reliever who taught Valenzuela the screwball in 1980. “He was mobbed. People scared him. His place was the mound.”

Fred Claire, then the Dodgers’ head of publicity, saw the media wave coming and tamed it. He told Jarrin, then as now the play-by-play man in Espanol, to translate for Valenzuela in mass interviews.

Fernando knew some English. “But he didn’t want to say the wrong thing so people could still be proud,” Jarrin said. The fact that Valenzuela didn’t give in, linguistically, only added to the love.

We know superstars: Woods, Jordan, Armstrong. Valenzuela matched their crossover appeal and trumped it. Because no one could explain where he came from, he became a holy man, a gift.

“It seemed like he was reincarnated,” Monday said. “A child off the field, a veteran on the mound.”

“His games were the only religious experience I’ve ever seen in baseball,” Scully said. “The whole thing had very little to do with baseball.”

“Women sat at home clutching their rosary beads,” Jarrin said.

Without a two-month strike at midseason, Valenzuela could have won 20.

“But that was one of his great contributions,” Castillo said. “The fans were mad at us, but they had to come back. They had to see Fernando.”

Dodgers radio commitments kept Valenzuela away from Pasadena on Sunday. “He didn’t want to come because he doesn’t know to say ‘reliquary,'” Castillo joked. “But here I am, the reliever picking up the starter again.”

Castillo knew better. Valenzuela completed 107 games. He was there in the first and still there in the ninth. He must have been divine.

Another Bonds, another Pujols? Maybe. Another Fernandomania? “Never, never, never, never,” said Jaime Jarrin. The skies are more crowded now, with pretensions of stars.